For a long time, snakes have not aroused special sympathy in people. The hostility caused by these reptiles is quite understandable - snakes can hardly be attributed to the beautiful representatives of the animal world, and even many of them are potentially deadly.
Therefore, already in ancient mythology, snakes were endowed with all kinds of negative traits and were the cause of the death of several famous characters. In the Bible, as you know, the tempting serpent in general is almost the main culprit of the human fall. Even the parable of Aesculapius, given below, could not overcome the negative attitude towards snakes.
Since this all started…
It has long been established that snakes play a very important role in maintaining the ecological balance, but this role is practically hidden from human eyes, and stories about dangerous poisonous snakes and pythons with anacondas, devouring a whole person, are available in any sources and are widely replicated by world culture.
1. Some species of snakes (there are more than 700) are known to be poisonous. However, there are no snakes with a mortality rate of 100% after being bitten. Of course, with a proviso - subject to the provision of medical care. 3/4 of people bitten by snakes survive, having survived only a slight discomfort.
2. 80% of those affected by snake bites are boys. Out of curiosity, they penetrate where it would not even enter the head of an adult, and fearlessly thrust their hands into holes, hollows and other holes in which snakes nest.
3. In the Ecuadorian province of Los Rios, several species of very poisonous snakes live at once, so the law obliges all agricultural owners to have as much snakebite antidote as there are workers on a ranch or hacienda. And, nevertheless, there are places where people die regularly - they simply do not have time to deliver an antidote due to the large size of the enterprises.
4. The bite of even a non-venomous snake can be dangerous - the remains of food from the teeth of a reptile can lead to quite serious complications if the wound is not disinfected in time.
5. The famous Swedish snake hunter Rolf Blomberg wrote in one of his books that you should not believe 95% of the stories about huge bloodthirsty snakes. However, he himself witnessed a python eat a small deer. Once a python, caught by Blomberg, strangled himself, trying to get rid of the rope with which he was tied.
6. According to legend, the fierce Cretan king Minos ordered the famous Greek physician Asclepius (his name is better known in the Roman version of "Aesculapius") to revive his deceased son. Asclepius was in thought - he had not yet had to heal the dead, but disobeying the command was fraught - he wandered along the road and mechanically killed the snake that had turned up under his arm with his staff. To the surprise of the doctor, another snake immediately appeared, putting a blade of grass in the mouth of the dead tribesman. She came to life, and both snakes quickly crawled away. Asclepius found a wonderful herb and revived the son of Minos. And the snake has since become a symbol of medicine.
7. Until the 17th century, people believed that snakes did not bite, but sting with the tip of the tongue, injecting poisonous saliva or bile into the human body. Only the Italian Francesco Redi established that snakes bite with their teeth and the poison gets into the bite from the teeth. To confirm his discovery, he drank snake bile in front of fellow natural scientists.
8. Another Italian, Felice Fontane, was the first to discover poisonous glands in snakes. Fontane also found out that for painful effects, it is enough for the poison to get into the blood of a person or animal.
9. Not all snakes need to use teeth in order to inject poison into the victim's body. The Philippine cobra spits out poison, which is highly toxic. The “shot” range is up to three meters. According to the collected statistics, even with the introduction of the serum, 2 out of 39 infected with the venom of the Philippine cobra died.
Philippine cobra
10. In Malaysia and on the islands of Indonesia, local residents keep small pythons and boas instead of cats - reptiles excellently hunt mice and other rodents.
The rat is out of luck
11. After a Texas resident stopped suffering from epilepsy after being bitten by a rattlesnake, studies have shown that the venom of some snakes can indeed cure the disease. However, the poison does not work on all epileptics. They treat leprosy, rheumatism, bronchial asthma and other diseases with snake venom.
12. In 1999, Moscow law enforcement officers detained two members of the Kemerovo criminal group who were selling 800 grams of viper venom. For a gram of poison, the detainees asked for $ 3,000. In the course of the investigation, it turned out that the poison was used to produce synthetic drugs, but after the rise in price of one of the ingredients, production became unprofitable, and they decided to sell the poison reserves in Moscow.
13. Alcohol really destroys snake venom, but this does not mean that after a bite you need to drink well and everything will pass. The poison is destroyed only when dissolved in alcohol, for example, if a couple of drops of poison are poured into a glass of vodka. Such a trick is often shown at snake shows in tropical countries.
14. Snakes, especially vipers, play an important role in curbing the growth of rodent populations. It happened more than once that after the destruction of over-bred snakes, the areas in which the reptiles disappeared were subjected to invasions of rodents, which are much more difficult to remove.
15. A gram of snake venom is much more expensive than a gram of gold, but you should not try to “milk” the first viper that comes to hand. Firstly, the circulation of all poisons is very strictly regulated, and the risk of being imprisoned is close to 100%. Secondly, the laboratories purchasing the poison operate under very strict regulations. In order to supply them with poison, it is necessary that the raw materials meet very serious requirements. And getting poison is a very time-consuming business - one gram of dry poison gives 250 vipers.
Dry viper venom
16. In recent decades, a technological breakthrough has been made in the artificial breeding of snakes. They achieved success in Southeast Asia, where snakes are needed not only for the sake of poison - they are actively consumed as food, and the skins are used for haberdashery. On modern snake farms, reptiles are raised in the hundreds of thousands. This became possible thanks to the creation of special attractants - food additives that imitate the taste of food familiar to snakes. These attractants are added to plant feed, which eliminates the need for animal food. Moreover, for different types of snakes, attractants are used differently.
17. Snakes are relatively short-lived, and their lifespan is very closely correlated with the size of the snake species. The larger the reptile, the longer it lives. A python has recently died in the Moscow Zoo after celebrating its 50th anniversary. But in general, 40 years is a very respectable age even for a large snake.
18. Absolutely all snakes are predators. However, they do not know how to chew their prey. Snake teeth only grab food and tear it apart. Due to the characteristics of the body, the digestion process in snakes is slow. The largest individuals digest food especially slowly.
19. Australia and New Zealand are relatively close to each other, but differ significantly in natural conditions. In the case of snakes, the difference is absolutely - in Australia, almost all the most venomous snakes are found, in New Zealand there are no snakes at all.
20. In the Indian city of Chennai, the Snake Park has been operating since 1967. There, reptiles live in conditions that are as close to natural as possible. The park is open to visitors who are even allowed to feed the snakes. Such attention of Indians is explained by the fact that due to religious beliefs many Indians cannot kill any living creature, which plays into the hands of mice and rats. Snakes, as mentioned above, do not allow rodents to breed too quickly.
21. The smallest "snake" species is the Barbados narrow-necked snake. This species was discovered by an American biologist on the island of Barbados, simply by turning over a stone. Under it were not worms, but snakes about 10 cm long. And even this little thing is predators. They eat termites and ants.
Barbados narrow-necked snake
22. Snakes are absent only in Antarctica and on several islands located far from the continents. On the island of Guam, which belongs with an intricate legal formulation to the United States, due to several snakes imported from the mainland, a genuine ecological disaster broke out. Once in greenhouse subtropical conditions with an abundance of food, snakes began to multiply hurricanely. By the beginning of the 21st century, there were already about 2 million snakes on Guam (the island's population is about 160 thousand people). They climbed anywhere - just to restore electrical equipment, the military (there is a huge American military base on Guam) spent 4 million dollars a year. To fight snakes, dead mice stuffed with paracetamol are annually “dropped off” on the island - this medicine is deadly for snakes. Dead mice are dropped from airplanes on small parachutes so that they get tangled in the branches of trees on which snakes live. It is unclear how such a "landing" can help in the fight against millions of snakes, if the largest batch of mice had only 2,000 individuals.
23. In 2014, the American naturalist Paul Rosalie, dressed in a specially designed costume, drenched in pig's blood, let himself be swallowed by a huge anaconda. The experiment was filmed, and the suit was equipped with sensors that showed Rosalie's physical condition. When the results of the experiment were published, environmental activists accused the daredevil of cruelty to the animal, and some even threatened the daredevil with physical harm.
The courageous Paul Rosalie crawls right into the mouth
24. Some species of snakes can be very large - 6 - 7 meters long - but the stories about 20 and 30-meter anacondas have not yet been confirmed by anything other than the word of honor of eyewitnesses. At the beginning of the twentieth century, American President Theodore Roosevelt established a reward of $ 300,000 (the car then cost $ 800) to a person who would deliver him an anaconda more than 9 meters long. The prize remained unclaimed.
This is a movie anaconda
25. Snakes are known for their hissing, but some species can make other sounds. The common pine snake living in the USA can bellow like a bull. And on the island of Borneo there is a snake that emits a wide range of sounds: from a cat's mooing to a rather creepy howl. It is called the Thin-Tailed Climbing Snake.
